I put many hours into each of them. Don't recall a Rivals mode. Wouldn't be surprised if there was a related Achievement for Rivals that I acquired and yet still don't recall it, either. I remember them in FM7 only because there was the occasional participation award that made them marginally worthwhile.

Welcome to the Hyperbolic Whine Chamber. If you cry hard enough you might get your pouter level over 9000.

It is in there when you go in to the Autumn season. They appear at the same time as blueprints.They are templated versions, i.e. car class and type such as Classic Muscle at C500 at early morning etc.

I quite like this method as it seems fairer to me and a bit more quality controlled If you are running in a work where weather is constantly changing and therefore traction, then it will be hard to always get ideal conditions to run the rival event.

Majorly disappointed. The direction we should be moving in is a leaderboard for every car in every class. Sortable. The more stats the better. But we go backward? They can simulate physics and now the weather, but spreadsheets of data are too much? Baffled. Maybe full leaderboards unlock later? I'd hope so because it's day 1, or day -3, and I'm wondering how my attention is going to be kept.

In these games, I build cars, tune and race .... over and over and over. I race ghost after ghost to test the cars. I compare them to each other and I compare them to others of the same type on the leaderboards ... and then I move to the next car. I do this for the full garage, so it takes forever ... it's 95% what I do in the game. So now I can only test my times against myself, and only if I record the times myself, pen and paper, like when I played video games last century? No leaderboards in a driving game with races, no meat and potatoes. Not pleased. I had just recently regained my love for Horizon 3, using rivals alot, and was looking forward to this game, planning to play it the same way. Ironic.

I am only after 1.5 hours of the game ... there is no rivals mode at all? or just something different from the previous FH3

From what I see so far, it's like the monthly rivals in FH3 for the festival events and street race rivals. You can't use any car, there are restrictions for each route. For example, one route allowed only B class hot hatches and nothing else. Another allowed only a bone stock something or other.

I put many hours into each of them. Don't recall a Rivals mode. Wouldn't be surprised if there was a related Achievement for Rivals that I acquired and yet still don't recall it, either. I remember them in FM7 only because there was the occasional participation award that made them marginally worthwhile.

I suppose everyone plays these games differently. After completing everything, it is the only thing that I do. I use the Rivals leaderboards to organise weekly HLCs from the Tuner’s section.

The only possible salvation could be Route Creator, but that isn’t available until the end of October.

I completely agree with OP, this is very disappointing. It's one of the features of Forza that (aside from tuning) I spent most of my time on. I missed it a lot in FM7 and now it's still missing in FH4 despite the many complaints regarding this feature not being included in FM7.

It is disappointing. In fact, it's bizarre given the back-pedalling and their eventual inclusion in FM7, and it's at direct odds with the 'progress in your own way' sales pitch. It takes the shine off what otherwise seems to be an excellent game. Maybe it will appear in the future though (along with overall leaderboards as long as I'm hoping for stuff).

Amen to that. Aside from this issue, I'm liking the game and I'm really trying not to go all negative even before Day One. If they do add this completely 100% necessary feature in a not unreasonable of time, like people seem to be saying happened with FM7 (although I don't know how long it took), then I'll be OK with it. And maybe some extra time will allow them to put some effort into trying to give us a leaderboard that doesn't have holes that can be exploited. That large bottom tile under the Rivals tab that has advertisements ... the ads there seem out of place since I don't think there's a tile like that under all tabs. In FH3, that tile of ads was under the Social tab. Hopefully that tile ends up being a proper class-based rivals.

Rivals are the best part of past games and where I spend at least half of my time. My whole enjoyment comes from building cars and then testing them and trying to climb the leaderboards. My goal in the past has always been to post reasonable rivals scores in every track and in every class. Most of this game is useless to my enjoyment but rivals certainly were not and my prime source of enjoyment.

I hope they're coming because I spent hours on the Goliath track seeing how far I could lower my A class time. I just finished the Colossus race and went to redo it in Rivals only to find I have to do it in an S class Ferrari. I'm not a fan of anything above A class and I don't like super/hypercars so being forced to drive that car just so I can do that track is very disappointing.